Taken
by Spades24
Summary: The mice head back to Mars to restart their lives, only to end up living another one entirely. Weird sci-fi with a bit of horror, and plenty of hurt, angst and despair. FINALLY CHAPTER FOUR!
1. Chapter 1

Inspiration comes in the strangest forms. For this story it came when I was at work, and there was this funny noise reaching my ears and making my tummy do odd little somersaults. I felt weird, and I don't know why, and it was a bit like deja vu, too. Anyway, strange noises, strange feelings... strange day dreams forming in my mind. Here is the result of such weirdness: a new story.

Not sure how long it will be yet, but I figured writing something is better than writing nothing (chapter 40 of Scars is still in the wings, not to mention all the other projects I have left waiting). I might change the story title, and it might be a while before chapters get names too.

**Rated M** for weirdness, but following my normal styles you can expect plenty of heartache and dark, disturbing stuff.

* * *

Taken

Chapter one:

It was an awesome and terrifying sight.

The machine stood at nearly ten feet tall, six feet wide, and stretched out so far in length the other end was barely discernible. Its inner workings were so complex even his mechanically-oriented mind couldn't make any sense of it. Pipes and dials; cogs and pistons; wires and chips and fuses, all encased together in this one great beast of an engine. It wasn't really an engine, not by what his species classified as one anyway, but having worked with such things all his life it was the closest comparison he could draw.

The thing hummed, too, in an almost monotonous rhythm, a pulsing. It sounded a bit like a heart beat but with only one thud: the dup without the lub, or the lub without the dup. It wasn't anywhere near so soothing as that inner sound though, and in fact every time he heard it his stomach would churn, and his own heart would race twice as fast as if it were trying to disassociate itself from the other.

Vinnie stood there, taking it all in, his eyes wide. The room was vast, as was necessary for housing such a large contraption, which stood running down its centre length so that both sides were easily accessible. At this end, by the doorway, were a number of smaller machines and computer-like stations. Apparently these were for monitoring or controlling the larger one, and were managed by a few of the staff who were not assigned to operate the behemoth dominating the main floor space.

The walls around the machine were more or less bare, with just a few panels at irregular intervals that also appeared to be some sort of computer terminals. From where he stood he couldn't see what was on the screens, but there were people accessing them from time to time so he could only make an educated guess. That was what he did about a few other aspects of the room, too, such as that there didn't appear to be any other doors bar the one he entered, and the clear-walled walkways encircling the upper part of the room seemed to be some kind of observatory. Certainly he could see figures up there, looking down. Watching, perhaps.

Aside from those glass panels above him there were no actual windows in this place. There were no skylights, nor anything at all to give its occupants glimpse of the outside world. Having never seen it himself, Vinnie had no idea what this might look like. Was it inhabitable, or toxic? Were they underground, underwater, or above the surface? Did it have blue skies, like on Earth, or an amber dusk like his birth planet?

_Mars._ Did that world even exist any more? he wondered. Or had they taken that too, when they had come for them? How long had they known about the red planet and its inhabitants, and why did they choose that moment to make their introductions? Not that it had been much of an introduction. Appearing out of nowhere one second, and silently announcing their intentions the next. In only a few short days the invaders had succeeding in doing what the Plutarkians had failed at trying to for decades.

None of that mattered now though. Vinnie sighed, struggling to push the images of those last days out of his mind. He tried instead to focus on happier memories, wistful rememberings of better times when his life had been filled with action, purpose, heroism, and the deep and meaningful bonds that he had had with his friends. He had to cling onto those feelings, somehow, because in this place there was no such thing. And if he allowed his senses to acknowledge what was about to happen to him then he would certainly crumble, and they would win. Though just how anyone could fight this particular battle was almost unimaginable. He knew deep inside it was one that they had already lost.

* * *

_Two months earlier..._

"Hey don't you worry babe, everything's going to work out fine. Biker's honour."

Throttle cocked his eye through his long, tan-furred fringe, but didn't stop what he was doing, and the woman nodded glumly as she watched the three of them work. They had almost finished boxing up all of their 'Earth stuff' as they called it, and pretty much just had their personal effects, clothing, and anything else they would be needing still left unpacked. Charley had promised to keep in storage what they couldn't take right now, and as soon as a transport vessel became available it would be used to ship it across to their new home. Or their old home, even.

The mice were finally going back to Mars. It had taken them four years to reach this point, but eventually everything had worked out. Earth was safe now; there was no real need for them to stay. The Plutarkians had been ousted from their skyline for the last time. All of them, that is, except for one.

They had never actually expected to draw a truce with Chicago's resident flounder, but after years of fighting with each other, and with him failing to live up to his superior's expectations, Limburger had finally given up. He had quietly asked the mice to let him complete one last acquisition, one that he would do what he could to minimise the long-term damage from it, and once he had received his last tainted pay cheque from his home world – and thus have enough capital to sort himself out with more legitimate finances – he would put a stop to any more of their operations on Earth. Permanently.

The purple-suited Plutarkian had held good on his word. Somehow he had convinced the council on Plutark, and the Lord High chairman Camembert himself, that Earth was no longer viable for resource harvesting. The mice and Charley had no idea how exactly he did this, but mere days after his final land withdrawal they detected a stench carrier in lunar orbit, and the subsequent vanishing of each and every other of the human-masked fish disguised down on planet Earth. Except Limburger. Apparently he was to remain in exile, cut off from his own kind, as a punishment for the catalogue of failures connected to his name.

The mice suspected the stranded fish had managed to sway that verdict too.

Now that Limburger was free of the burden his own planet had put upon him, he was at last able to just be himself. A businessman, or a crime boss, or just a malodorous millionaire with time on his hands. Either way, he didn't pose any kind of real threat now that his external funding had been cut, and now that his goon army had disbanded, his super villains re-commissioned elsewhere, and his access to alien technology all but halted. Even Karbunkle had gone, so there was no one around to encourage him to return to his deviant and despicable ways.

There was one thing that Limburger had kept of that old life, something which he had concealed from the Plutarkian council when they came by to repossess their nation's technology. He hadn't had it for long though; his transporter had swiftly been 'borrowed' indefinitely by the mice, and the moment Charley got her hands on it she modified it to prevent any future alien threat to Earth.

For the time being it would only connect to Mars, and nowhere else, and certainly not to Plutark. Now that she and the mice had it in their possession they would be putting it to good use. And once that was done... well they wouldn't need it anymore, and they wouldn't want anyone else to have it either. They would go home, and it would be set to self destruct upon their final exit. Charley would stay behind to make sure this happened, of course.

The pull from their native land was strong, but not definitive. The mice had at first offered to stay behind and live out their lives with their human companion on Earth. But she could see in their eyes the deep longing they had to be back with their own kind, on their own planet, where they could be themselves and not have to hide. Where they could be free to roam, free to ride their Martian bikes as fast as they liked without reprisal, and free to blast their laser weapons at just about anything without causing any serious damage.

For the next couple of months Charley's garage would be rid of any danger of being blown to pieces by her rambunctious houseguests. Or smashed up. Or turned upside down. Or covered in muddy boot prints. Stale leftovers. Root beer spills. Grease, oil, blood. Let's not forget the fur; oh so much fur! She had never known anything to shed so much damn hair, not even the Labrador mix she had had as a child. At least the dog had had its own set of towels, brushes and shampoos, and didn't insist on raiding her toiletry cabinet 'just to see what something looked/smelled/tasted/felt like to use.'

Despite all the things that irked her about the bros, however, the next few months were going to be so empty without them. Even with them assuring her that the time would fly by, and that once they had got their new pad set up they would be back, no delays, she knew it was still going to be difficult. And boring. And lonely. But she would wait here until they returned, because when they did it wouldn't just be for their stuff. She would be accompanying them, and her own belongings, to their new home. Her new home. They mice had insisted she was welcome to join them, and it hadn't taken her long to make her decision.

In the meantime she had to finalise the sale of the garage, which would keep her busy in itself, but up until that point she would still have small jobs on the go – clients that had been good to her that she wouldn't turn away until she had to – and her own packing to do.

Charley didn't actually have a great deal, not beyond what she had in the garage itself, and the bare basics in the way of furniture and other amenities in order for her to actually live. In fact, looking at the stacks of boxes scattered haphazardly around the mice's own living space, the scoreboard at Quigley field, she almost thought the three Martians had amassed far more junk than she had ever owned in her entire life.

"Do you really need to keep that?" she asked again and again in exasperation, pointing this time to the giant cardboard cut-out of what used to be Vinnie's fifty dollar poster of himself. "Or that" she added, spying the white mouse himself sneaking a miniature bubble-gum dispenser back into the box she had sifted through earlier.

Caught in the act, Vinnie grinned impishly. "Sure I do, sweetheart. The guys back home will never believe me otherwise."

Charley rolled her eyes. That was his excuse for almost everything he had kept. They had argued for the better part of the last week on just what exactly would be useful to take to Mars, and what really wouldn't. The mechanic knew that boys loved their toys, and hadn't batted an eyelid at the various gizmos and gadgets they insisted on packing up – especially the things she knew didn't even exist on their home planet, and that might provide some kind of entertainment, or fascination. But keeping useless mementos such as broken candy machines; faded, torn posters of rock and roll legends; lumps of dirt that looked like.. like... well that last rock had vaguely resembled Madonna she would admit... and ego-fuelling pictures of the mice themselves that had been turned into a makeshift dartboard? No way.

"I swear to god Vinnie, I have never seen anyone keep so much crap, let alone want to cart it all half way across the solar system just to show off to his friends, who won't have a clue what they are anyway."

"That's the point doll, how will they know unless I show them?"

The white mouse didn't seem to notice her ensuing glare, and happily plucked another discarded item from her pile.

He wasn't the only one trying to hide things she had already put in the trash back into the storage crates. Throttle was in the middle of slipping a shopping bag full of bottle caps in amongst his stack, and Modo blushed furiously as the green-eyed woman settled her gaze on the rubber ducky he was failing to conceal behind his back.

_Honestly. I'm sure they said they didn't even have bath tubs on Mars._

Considering that the mice had arrived on Earth with nothing but their bikes and the clothes on their backs, and considering just how un-materialistic their kind tended to be, there really was an awful lot of boxes that she was going to have to deal with. And pay storage costs for.

"We're sorry Charley-ma'am, we.. it's just..." Modo was floundering, embarrassed, and the woman softened.

"It's al'right you big lug, if you really want to keep every piece of... every hunk of..." _Every memory they have of this place,_ "...everything you guys have collected whilst you've lived here... umm.. I guess that's fine with me."

She slumped, defeated, and Modo grinned, promptly joining his two bros in a violent scramble to claim back all the bits of rubbish the Earth woman had put to one side. She sighed for the hundredth time that afternoon. If she hadn't been so worried she might have laughed at the ridiculous site of the three of them fighting over nothing, the trash pile soon abandoned in favour of their typical rough and tumble.

Charley feigned a small smile, but it wasn't enough to calm the unease she felt deep inside. What if something went wrong? What if the transporter malfunctioned, what if they never made it back to Mars, what if they never came back to Earth to get her, what if Limburger had set them up and the moment the mice left the Plutarkians came crashing through the door again?

Dozens of versions of the worst case scenario nagged relentlessly at her mind.

_Don't be an idiot Charlene, the guys will be fine. You fixed up that transporter, and tested it, and you will be here to make sure that fat fish keeps on the straight and narrow. Two months is nothing, they'll be back before you know it._

A loud crash brought her back to her senses. Three panting mice lay in a heap amongst a sea of upturned boxes, their contents not just spilled but practically exploded around them.

The worry lifted, and her smile deepened. On the up side, she thought, she would have two months peace and quiet at her disposal, and would be able to pack _her_ belongings in complete and utter safety.


	2. Chapter 2

I would just like to accredit some of the ideas my mind had dug up to having read some **seriously** good stories, which have obviously stuck like glue to my subconscious mind as I didn't even realise until last night the similarities that have appeared here to them! I hope I didn't cut it too close to the mark, my apologies.

Anyway, on with the story. It's all very kind of spur of the moment writing, so i'm not exactly saying it's going to be my best work. But I hope you enjoy it anyway, even if it's more than a little in the realm of odd.

* * *

Chapter 2.

Even by intergalactic standards his own species was tall. The average male Martian mouse stood at six feet eleven inches high, which put him personally at the short end of the scale for his kind. Vinnie was only six foot five, which wasn't far off the average human male. But it was way below the giant alien beings that currently surrounded him.

They were so big they were easily able to see over their massive machine, and as they led him down the length of the room he spotted several heads peering at him from the other side - which really did make him feel quite uncomfortable.

Bearing the hallmark anthro-type facial structure, with forward-facing complex eyes, they weren't so much remarkable for their strangeness as for their sheer ugliness. It might have just been his perspective – i.e. looking up at their towering forms – but aside from a shock of shimmering tresses that reached down in an extended mane from their crown to their hips, their wrinkled, grey skin, white eyes, and two pairs of pointed ears, coupled with an extremely pungent odour... Well it made him think of a character from a TV show Charley liked to watch from time to time, some dude called 'Spock', only about a million years older. And far less hygienic. The aliens smelled and looked worse even than the most disgusting of Plutarkian specimens, including the infamous Loogey Brothers.

Despite the resemblance to something that had died crawling out of an old folk's home, their lofty stature actually made them extremely intimidating to behold. Not that it had stopped many a mouse from valiantly trying to fight back, though, with the old mantra 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' playing a large part in their enthusiasm to just keep shooting, even if it didn't seem to make a blind bit of difference.

Once one of them had hold of you, there simply was no point in struggling. Even their loose grasp on his arms was more than adequate to stop him trying to escape; their strength and speed, height and intellect vastly outweighed his own. He felt dwarfed by their presence. He felt tiny, and insignificant. And helpless. Vinnie imagined that many of the smaller animals on his home planet, and on Earth, must have felt something similar when they had been grabbed and picked up by them, except that mouse (and human) skin wasn't exactly impervious to teeth and claws. He felt so powerless right now he might as well have been a lab rat in a cage, he thought numbly.

It certainly didn't help that he didn't know what they were going to do with him.

* * *

"And don't forget to brush your teeth, Vincent! That's twice a day, not month, you hear me?"

"Yeah I hear you sweetheart" a now distant voice replied, "And don't you forget to b..."

"VINNIE NOT ANOTHER WORD!"

"Jeez bro, too much information."

"Sorry Charley-ma'am, we'll make sure he does his teeth... and teach him a lesson or two on how to talk proper to a lady."

The sound of a thud, and a yell, confirmed that Modo was already doing just as he promised.

Despite the downpour of tears on her cheeks she couldn't help but smile at that. Her guys never stopped being what they were, and it reassured her a little. Charley had been fretting all weekend about whether or not the bros would change somehow once they got home, reverting to their near-chauvinistic, macho, freedom fighting personas and forgetting all about her in the process.

Their last words as the bright light of the transporter consumed them relieved some of that angst. And gave her something else to look forward to. Next time she saw Vinnie van Wham she would take great pleasure in grabbing hold of his nether regions, and making her point well and truly clear that it was not o.k. to go blurting out other people's private matters to all within earshot.

Charley dried her eyes on her shirt sleeve, and giggling slightly at the reaction to their reunion the white mouse would have, stepped well back of the stolen Plutarkian invention. They had installed the device in the yard behind the Last Change Garage, and programmed into it a sixty second countdown to the self-destruct that would start after it had shut off. If there was a major problem Charley would be able to override it, otherwise she would stand back and watch her only tangible link to the red planet disintegrate before her eyes. They had made quite sure it would be unrecognisable, and unsalvageable, afterwards. It was then to be buried in concrete just to make sure that no humans, nor a certain Plutarkian, were able to find or use it ever again.

"Three... two... one..." the woman counted out loud, slipping on a pair of industrial ear defenders on as she did so.

_This is it, here we go. Guys I really hope you made it out the other side._

She had been hoping for some sort of hidden surprise when it went, like fireworks, or a drum roll, or something. Something that one of the guys might have found amusing to sneak into the sequence just because she had insisted that the noise, and thus local disturbance, be kept to a minimum. When the explosion came it was almost disappointing. In the end it wasn't so much of a bang as a soft pop.

A few minutes later the smouldering remains of the transporter hissed and crackled before finally withering under the foam of the extinguisher. Charley swallowed hard, and allowed herself a moment to gather her thoughts. There was no point in moping around now, she decided; she just had to get on with things and keep herself busy, and cross off the tasks on her very long to-do list one by one, much like she would be the days on her calendar. Two months they had said. All she had to do was be ready.

* * *

He was still struggling to understand them. Somewhere inside his mind there were voices, of a sort, each coming up with alternative versions of what he could hear. It was as if his brain couldn't decide which language to translate to, though so far he had had a miss-mash of Native mouse, Pan-Martian, English and even the odd word of Southern rat all rolled into one chaotic mess of a sentence. On their own he would have deciphered the words, easily, but together in a single string they made no sense at all.

Vinnie had been told that it would take time for it to settle down, for the tech they had put inside him to fully integrate with his brain and begin functioning efficiently. Or at least that's what he had finally figured out from the jumble his ears had first picked up, and that had taken several hours and a colossal headache to achieve.

The effort of understanding them wasn't the only contributing factor to the massive pain in his temple. Their actual voices weren't all that pleasant to listen to; it was like an old record being played backwards with strawberry preserve sticking into the grooves. Crackling, squeaking, whining, with deep notes throbbing in the background, and higher ones dancing around on the surface of a badly tuned melody. It was significantly worse than some of the Earth heavy metal vocals he and his bros had actually enjoyed once.

Now they were talking to him again, and as much as he wanted to block out the awful din he knew he had to pay attention. One of the other aspects of this new language-detecting and deciphering ability given to him was that it could store the un-translated speech and decode it later. Or so they said. All he had to do was listen now, and later on the tech would sit there whirring away until it found a way to explain to him the garble of words in his mind.

Not that it would exactly wait; it was already processing what they were saying, and by now he was feeling overloaded with four or five different translations of one particular word they kept on repeating. And he still hadn't actually come to understand what that word was.

Vinnie desperately wished he could just ask them to slow down a bit, and give him time to work it all out. To stop what they were doing and listen to him for a change. To not do the horrific thing that they were about to do to him. Not that he was quite sure what that was, yet, but having just walked a good ninety feet up the length of the immensely elongate room, and having seen on his way to his 'port' the other half dozen or so mice already in their respective places, he had a fair idea of how he was going to end up. But he couldn't ask his alien captors anything, no matter how much he wanted to. He just had to lie there and wait and hope it wasn't going to be as bad as it looked like it was. The other mice he had seen hadn't exactly appeared comfortable.

How many of his kind that were in here right at this moment in time he didn't know. The machine had repeating units every few feet or so, which given the distance it extended before him gave him an estimate of fifty or so spaces on either side. Enough spots, therefore, for around one hundred of his fellow mice to be placed in.

His port, like all the rest, had a short table-like platform sticking out of the side, and a multitude of other devices surrounding it. Vinnie's tired brain had tried putting his own words to the objects he could see, and aside from the table that he was currently prostrate upon, he had come up with restraints (that was easy, they were holding him down), stirrups (something Charley had explained to him one day after they caught her watching some kind of reality TV show: 'Undercover Midwives' or something), a ventilator and a vital-signs monitor (medical dramas), and lots and lots of tubes.

There were plenty of other things he couldn't name, even with them giving him a very detailed explanation of the equipment he was being hooked up to. They seemed to enjoy this aspect of their work, he decided, because the more they spoke the more nervous he felt, and they must have noticed this because they pressed on even more animatedly with their spiel when he had grimaced in response.

_Jeez don't they ever shut up?_

It had also struck the bewildered mouse that not even Karbunkle had possessed anything quite so sophisticated as this mind-bogglingly mammoth set-up. These alien beings were far more advanced than just about any species he had ever heard of. Whoever these were they were not in any database he, or any of his kind, had ever had access to, and he wondered if anyone who knew about them had even survived long enough to record their existence. It was doubtful. Vinnie suspected that anyone who happened upon these particular aliens were probably long gone themselves.


	3. Chapter 3

**WARNING:** This chapter contains some strong language.

* * *

Chapter 3.

Charley hung up the telephone and sat back in her desk chair. Mr Galloway was an old friend from way back, and he had come to town to visit his daughter for the weekend. He hadn't wanted to impose, he said, but his truck had been making some suspicious grating noises the whole way over here, coming from somewhere beneath the hood. Naturally she had not hesitated in agreeing to take a look at it. It would be a nice way to round off her days as an Earth mechanic, after all, doing one last job for one last special customer.

He would be around by ten, which gave her an hour to put away what she was fairly sure she wouldn't need, and make sure the tools that probably would be used for the job were quickly accessible. She didn't want to keep the man from his family any longer than she had to.

Before getting up from her desk she took another glance at the wall behind it. Her calendar (Biker babes of 1996 – Vinnie's choice, not hers) was a sea of X's where she had marked off the days over the last month. It was the 30th March, which meant only four more to go until they were supposed to contact her.

Leaning over the desk, Charley lifted the page to reveal April's leather-clad beauty, and trace her fingers over the first three days of the grid below. _Wednesday_.

Not that she expected the guys to be on time; she knew that anything could have gone on back on Mars to delay them, and that date was only provisional and depended largely on the availability of the transport ship. There were only three spaceships available to the whole planet: the stolen stalker ship, a Plutarkian vessel that had 'crashed' on the surface last year, and - their proudest achievement yet – the nearly repaired Martian cycledrome that the three mice had ploughed into the scoreboard over four years earlier.

The last visit by Stoker and Rimfire to Earth had seen the remaining debris from that wreck taken back to Mars, and with the other spare parts the mouse population had managed to scavenge, and a little help from Charley herself to remake other missing components (which had been sent through the transporter not long after they had acquired it), the repairs had been well underway when the three mice had left.

By now it would be finished, she was certain. With her guys there to help, having learnt from the best mechanic on Earth (herself), she figured it would be up and running pretty soon.

Talking of which, her brain reminded her, she was meant to be getting the garage ready for a repair job of her own.

She smiled. Mr Galloway liked his coffee black, no sugar.

* * *

Their formidable strength was probably one of the reasons they didn't bother much with excessive means of restraint. Right now he had the bare minimum of straps keeping him on the table, and they were probably there to leave the alien's hands free to work on him. And to stop him bucking against the sharp objects poking at his body.

His own forelimbs were locked away above his head. Manual dexterity was something the alien species was quite familiar with, and thus they had encased each of his hands in a padded mitten, and then chained them together at the wrist. Their locks were nothing like he had ever encountered, however, and his even his prehensile tail was no use in trying to remove them.

Vinnie was grateful they hadn't done something drastic to that particular body part, at least not yet. They had examined it, sure, and pulled on it, poked it, bent it, lifted him by it, but they hadn't made any motions to either try to tie it down, or remove it. _Thank goodness_.

And he wasn't about to give them any reason to, either. They were too strong, too clever, too advanced a species to even think about messing with. He had no choice but to just do whatever they wanted, and keep on praying that things weren't going to get any worse.

But whomever he was praying to clearly wasn't in any mood to listen. It was getting too much now; he writhed around on the table, pulling against his bindings, and thinking over and over to himself how eternally grateful he was to Mother Mars that his species longevity was severely stunted by comparison to others. Humans included. This was not something he would want to spend a extended lifetime having to endure.

The band of tape around his neck was buzzing ominously now. A warning. Vinnie noticed the sound, and frantically fought against the discomfort to still himself, knowing that if he didn't then they would not hesitate to make him. He hadn't seen any kind of physical device, no controller, nor remote for the material stuck to his skin, but he was in no doubt they had control over it somehow. It was like their version of a hands-free electroshock collar, which much like the illegal ones he had seen on Earth for wayward canines, was capable of sending a disabling jolt to his nervous system. It was one of the first things they had installed upon their acquiring of him, a near impervious solution to keeping firm command of their new Martian captives.

He could just about feel the tiny hair-like prongs against the back of his neck, one on either side of his spine. These were already armed and ready to deliver their message to his struggling body, but he continued to try his hardest to relax and soon felt the tingling sensation wane in response. He had avoided having to suffer that on top of everything else, at least.

Vinnie took a few deep breaths and slowly opened his eyes. For the last few minutes he had felt a searing pain in his belly, and though it hadn't gone he had adjusted to it enough to take a peek at the cause of it. He groaned audibly at the red wash on his white fur, and stifling the urge to be sick closed his eyes once more and rested his head back on the table.

The collar-like tape buzzed again. He remembered them telling him that, like with his language decoding implant, it would take some time for the sensors buried in the device around his neck to learn how his body worked. For the mean time they advised keeping all vocalisations to a minimum, unless he wanted to be zapped just for something as simple as a loud yawn.

An hour after his brain had worked this recommendation out he did just that, and work up later aching worse than when he had contracted Martian flu.

Of course by now Vinnie was starting to suspect that they didn't want him completely mute, and in fact were eager to squeeze every last sound of discomfort out of him as they could possibly get away with. Or at least that was one explanation for their notable lack of using any form of anaesthetic whilst they worked on him. Perhaps being stunned unconscious wouldn't be such a bad thing right now after all.

_Umbilicus..?_

So the translator had finally come up with something for that word they kept on repeating. Just a pity he had no idea what it meant, other than they had been pointing at his naval when they said it.

He groaned again, louder this time, ignoring the resultant warning hum coming from just below his ears. They were focused on something else now anyway.

"_Now open your eyes and take a look. The attachment will bed itself in over the next few hours, after which your tissues will remodel. The scarring will be minimal."_

The white mouse knew better than to ignore a direct order, no matter how innocuously it had been delivered. That his ears and brain had simultaneously processed it in real time, signalling that the translator was finally catching up, went unnoticed at this point. Which was just as his gaze refocused onto his midsection.

What he wanted to say was 'Holy crap, what the fuck is that thing?!' but instead blurted out a shrill squeal of shocked distress. He secretly hoped that the noise would goad his neck-band into shocking him into oblivion, sparing him from either having to acknowledge the thing sticking out of, or rather into, his belly, or from feeling any more of the pain that installing it had caused.

Unfortunately for him, and perhaps to the satisfaction of the alien beings that stood around him, the tech in the band had also caught up with his body's workings, and had already learned the difference between speech, attempted speech, and plain old screaming. The first two of those were now completely, and permanently inhibited.

Even as they continued to explain to him what the device fixed into what was once his navel was for, and how it would be used, Vinnie continued to cry out, truly horrified by what was happening to him. Everything that came out of their mouths was being instantly processed by the thing they had jammed into his temporal lobe, and nothing he could do would block out their very thorough account of just what his purpose in life was now.

* * *

_Just one more day Charlene, you excited yet?_

Hell yeah.

_Any moment now that communicator's going to blip, are you ready for it?_

Hell yeah.

_All packed up for your long trip, your last big move?_

Hell yeah.

_You got a back-up plan for if this all goes under?_

Sadly, yes. Her garage was going one way or the other, but Charley wasn't so stupid as to assume everything else would progress so smoothly. Besides, if the mice were delayed she had to have somewhere to stay whilst she waited.

She had had a chat with Stosh, the cleaning guy from the stadium, and he was more than happy for her to make the guy's former bachelor pad her temporary residence. Or permanent one, if it came to it. Not that she would want to live there forever, not with all the memories it would drag up - not to mention the expense of heating it, and the impracticalities of running a garage from within. No, if all else failed she already had taken a look at several other potential premises around the city. Ones that wouldn't leave her an emotional wreck every time she walked through the front door, but were still within reach of her old client base. And the mice, should they eventually make it back.

The long talk she had had with Mr Galloway about her moving plans had really helped to put everything in perspective. Of course she hadn't told him just how far she was planning on going away, but she had mentioned that if it didn't work out she would come back to the city. It was heartening when he promised to keep a look out for her, just in case he was ever stuck needing a new filter, or a spur of the moment oil change. Or just a catch up over coffee.

Coffee. Yes, that's something she better not forget about. Whilst her boys hadn't taken much of a shine to the bitter drink (except to sober themselves up after a long night of goon bashing, or an excess of root beer), she wasn't too sure she could go cold turkey on her morning pick-me-up.

She would have to leave her espresso maker behind, but the filter press was firmly packed amongst other fragile items, and all she had to do was make one last outing to the superstore to pick up all the other consumables that were absent from the red planet. The guys would never forgive her if she didn't turn up with as many hot dogs and root beers as she could physically carry.


	4. Distance

Still trying to overcome writer's block, and force myself to get on with outstanding projects. Here is the next chapter of this one (the first one with a name!), which perhaps you might need tissues for?

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Chapter 4. Distance.

The compound itself seemed a huge and sprawling complex. Around the vast machine room ran endlessly long, wide corridors, and these in turn were linked to each other by equally lengthy, yet much narrower ones. The main thoroughfares were brightly lit, and almost clinical in decor, with some kind of tile on the floor that extended to and somehow merged with the smooth white gloss covering the walls. By comparison the smaller passages were quite tunnel-like; they were dimly lit and bare of finishings of any kind. But one thing both sets of walkways shared in common was tremendous height, as even the branching tunnels were lofty enough for the aliens to walk through unencumbered (parts of the main corridor, particularly the primary route to the machine room, were so high-ceilinged it could virtually give the feeling of being outside).

Along the spacious corridors, dotted between the openings for the side tunnels and other large passages, were several doorways into, presumably, smaller rooms than the one housing the great machine. The doors themselves were smooth and metallic, with polished and reflective surfaces, and with no obvious way of controlling them. There were no keyholes, handles, number pads, or even hinges. But they did open, somehow, and much like some of the other equipment housed in this place they seemed to operate by some kind of remote and invisible force.

Again, in contrast, the doorways that lined some of the narrower passageways seemed much more low-tech. They were smaller, and heavy, solid looking things, resembling the wooden doors of medieval castles and other dwellings from that era. There were what looked like hinges, and even handles on most, but in common with the larger metal doors there was no obvious locking mechanism anywhere to be seen. What lay behind most of these and the other doors remained largely a mystery, as there were no windows into any of the spaces beyond.

Eventually the main corridor itself, the one connecting directly to the machine room, terminated in a set of doors that looked just like those into that other colossal space. It wasn't clear what was beyond them, either, only that with the distance and trajectory of the main routes it could be another sector just like this one. You could only gauge the overall size of the building from the maze of interlinking passages, assuming that – like with the giant machine – there were repeating units with similar or identical layouts in each of those other sectors, and that together they surrounded the massive room at the centre. If indeed that even were the centre, and that there weren't more of those massive machine-containing labs elsewhere in the complex. Anything was possible in the bewildered eyes of the mice trapped within this immense and confusing place.

Vinnie had not yet seen that much of the compound, but given the length of the corridors he had been led down, and what he had seen on the way, he had viewed enough to form an idea of the tremendous potential for size this complex had.

After spending several hours hooked up to the machine, Vinnie was taken back through the great doorway and towards the 'cell block' (his guess, not a translation) he had so far been kept in. He was still in pain, and shock, and the distance back to the sparse comfort of his cell appeared interminable. It had taken nearly ten minutes at a fast pace to reach the machine room from there, and most of that way he had jogged whilst the aliens' extended stride length allowed them a comfortable stroll. On the way back he stumbled so much he was practically being dragged along by them, as they didn't slow their swift pace for him at all.

There were several other chaperoned mice heading in the opposite direction, and it was clear now to Vinnie that for some at least this was not to be their first encounter with the machine. He spied the weird devices that had been implanted into their navels, and saw the expression of resignation and discomfort on their faces as they prepared for yet another torturous session with the aliens' bizarre contraption. For the rest of the mice, the terror and uncertainty in their eyes indicated that they too had noticed the strange changes that seemed to be happening to their fellows, and were probably wondering if this time it was their turn.

It distressed him to see what he saw of the other mice, especially when the odd fear-stricken face that passed him by was one he recognised. He couldn't do anything to reassure them, or warn them, as the neck-band prohibited speech and there was never any opportunity for close contact. He was marched on and they each were left to face their uncertain fates alone.

Being alone was not something that Martian mice did very well. They were social and gregarious by nature, with families and friends choosing to live either together or within a relatively close distance of others they knew, and even to loose acquaintances if there was no one else. Sometimes a mouse, when venturing beyond familiar territory for the first time, would - if given the chance - seek shelter with a complete stranger rather than remain on their own. Safety in numbers was a strong and ever-present force within them, and for good reason.

For the first week or so since being brought here Vinnie had been kept by himself. His tiny cell was bare-walled and unlit, and though thickly lined with a straw-like litter it offered no real comfort to him, and he craved the company of another mouse – any other mouse. Since being taken from Mars he had not seen nor heard anything of his two bros, nor any of the other mice he had been close to. The ones he recognised in the corridor had been members of the freedom fighters, or their families, and he may have done battle alongside them once or twice. But even the ones he didn't know would have been infinitely preferable company to being left on his own.

Vinnie felt sure that they, like he, had spent their first few days here separated from the others, locked inside their dark and windowless prisons with no real idea as to what was in store for them. And no doubt that they, like he, had spent that time feeling more desperately alone and scared than ever in all their entire lives.

In the passage where his cell was there were other, identical doors, and Vinnie knew that behind each of them there were others like him. And though he could not see, nor touch, talk to or connect with them in any way, he could sense their distant presence. The sounds and smells of their pain and despair met his own and amplified the terrible feeling of isolation, a sensation that did not evaporate even when he was collected and taken elsewhere, passing those other mice on his way. Contact between his kind had always carried more gravity than either verbal or visual communication.

Until today he had had no idea what was in store for himself and his kin. Before his long walk to the machine he had only seen mice on his way to and from sessions in the smaller labs, which were situated very close to the cell block, and they had not yet been modified in any noticeable way. Those initial visits were largely only uncomfortable, and scary simply because he didn't know what to expect. Mostly they involved receiving a thorough health screening, and aside from being examined by hand and scanned with numerous medical-looking devices, the worst of it came in a few rather horrific sessions with trayfuls of needles (Vinnie's translator had picked up 'blood tests' and 'vaccinations'). It was in one of these smaller labs where he had been implanted with his language decoder, though the neck-band was attached the moment the alien beings had him firmly on board their waiting ship back on Mars.

Now Vinnie had seen and experienced a taster of what was soon to come for himself and his fellow Martians, and that changed everything. For starters he wasn't taken back to his old cell, but instead was led to one of the passages that was much closer than the other cell block. On his way he saw more and more of the modified mice, and felt a desperate urge to reach out to them, his pain and theirs fighting to push them closer so that they could seek some relief from it all. But it was impossible.

This cell block was a little different from the first. The doors running along its length were more widely spaced, so there were less of them, and about halfway down the aliens paused to open one, pushing him inside before closing it firmly behind him. Then the reason for the spatial difference became instantly apparent – the cell inside was much larger (about five times wider, and twice as deep) than his old one.

Perhaps the aliens had noticed how terribly isolation affected their Martian prisoners. Perhaps, despite their considerable enjoyment of inflicting unreasonable amounts of pain on their new subjects, they did not completely disregard the basic requirements for their general needs and well-being. It was doubtful that there was an issue of lack of space, after all, and unless their goal was some form of insanity resulting from psychological torture, they must have decided that there was nothing to gain from keeping all of the mice separate indefinitely.

Vinnie was not alone in this new cell. There, huddled together in the litter, were half a dozen or so other Martian mice.

He was filled with such relief that he was no longer alone that he collapsed onto the floor and wept, and was instantly engulfed by a mass of soft bodies, drawing him into the comfort and warmth of the huddle.

Without the light he couldn't see it, but the close contact told him what his eyes could not. Each of these mice sported the same awful thing in their midsection, and from the smell he could tell they too had been freshly implanted. This was probably also their first time in the shared cell since their arrival, and their fevered desire to embrace him and each other only made him cry the harder. The pain of separation released in a tidal flood of emotion, repeated each time another joined them, a relief from at least some of their suffering.

There was no need for speech, and not a single neck-band buzzed as the mice cuddled together to share in their distress. As they pressed closer, Vinnie could sense that each like he by now had at least some level of understanding as to what the aliens were doing to them, though not all had fully mastered the use of their language decoders. As antennae brushed tips and Vinnie merged his troubled thoughts with those of the other mice, individuals with the least proficiency in this new ability drew heavily on his mind, trying to learn from him what he had deciphered. He in turn examined their memories for anything he might not yet have discovered for himself.

In the end there was little left to exchange but their body heat, and as no more mice were delivered to that cell its inhabitants slowly settled, exhausted from their emotional reunion. One by one they drifted off to sleep; their faces, now damp from weeping, rested on firm shoulders; their swollen bellies – blood red and inflamed from the implantation – were tucked awkwardly between limbs. Tails entwined, and noses touched. Vinnie was still buried in the middle of the mass, and despite the sharp pain in his abdomen he finally felt relaxed enough to actually rest, the torment of being alone diminished at last.


End file.
